People feel committed to other individuals, groups, organizations, or moral norms in many contexts of everyday life. Such social commitment can lead to positive outcomes, such as increased job satisfaction or relationship longevity; yet, there can also be detrimental effects to feeling committed. Recent high-profile cases of fraud or corruption in companies like Enron or Volkswagen are likely influenced by strong commitment to the organization or coworkers. Although social commitment might increase dishonest behavior, there is little systematic knowledge about when and how this may occur. In the present project, we reviewed 20,988 articles, focusing on studies that experimentally manipulated social commitment and measured dishonest behavior. We retained 445 effect sizes from 121 articles featuring a total of 91,683 participants across 33 countries. We found no evidence that social commitment increases or reduces dishonest behavior in general. Nonetheless, we did find evidence that the effect strongly depends on the target of the commitment. Feeling committed to other individuals or groups reduces honest behavior (g = -0.17 [-0.24, -0.11]), whereas feeling committed to honesty norms through honesty oaths or pledges increases honest behavior (g = 0.27 [0.19, 0.36]). The analysis identified several moderating variables and detected some degree of publication bias across effects. Our findings highlight the diverging effects of different forms of social commitment on dishonest behavior and suggest a combination of the different forms of commitment could be a possible means to combat corruption and dishonest behavior in the organizational context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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承诺（不）诚实：对个人社会承诺或诚实誓言对不诚实行为的不同影响进行系统的元分析审查。


在日常生活的许多情况下，人们感到对其他个人、团体、组织或道德规范有承诺。这种社会承诺可以带来积极的成果，例如提高工作满意度或延长关系寿命；然而，这也会对承诺感产生不利影响。安然或大众等公司最近发生的备受瞩目的欺诈或腐败案件很可能受到对组织或同事的坚定承诺的影响。尽管社会承诺可能会增加不诚实行为，但关于这种情况何时以及如何发生的系统知识却很少。在本项目中，我们审查了 20,988 篇文章，重点关注通过实验操纵社会承诺和衡量不诚实行为的研究。我们保留了 121 篇文章中的 445 个效应量，涉及 33 个国家/地区的 91,683 名参与者。我们没有发现任何证据表明社会承诺总体上会增加或减少不诚实行为。尽管如此，我们确实发现了证据表明效果在很大程度上取决于承诺的目标。对其他个人或团体的承诺会减少诚实行为 (g = -0.17 [-0.24, -0.11])，而通过诚实誓言或承诺而遵守诚实规范的感觉会增加诚实行为 (g = 0.27 [0.19, 0.36])。该分析确定了几个调节变量，并检测到不同效应之间存在一定程度的发表偏差。我们的研究结果强调了不同形式的社会承诺对不诚实行为的不同影响，并表明不同形式的承诺的结合可能是在组织环境中打击腐败和不诚实行为的可能手段。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。